Joseph Berger, David G. Wagner and Murray Webster
We survey and organize over fifty years of theoretical research on status and expectation state processes. After defining some key terms in this theoretical approach, we briefly…
Abstract
Purpose
We survey and organize over fifty years of theoretical research on status and expectation state processes. After defining some key terms in this theoretical approach, we briefly describe theories and branches in the program.
Methodology/Approach
We also focus on a few theories that illustrate distinct patterns of theory growth, using them to show the variety of ways in which the research program has grown.
Findings
The program structure developed from a single set of theories on development and maintenance of group inequality in the 1960s to six interrelated branches by 1988. Between 1988 and today, the overall structure has grown to total 19 different branches. We briefly describe each branch, identifying over 200 resources for the further study of these branches.
Research Implications
Although the various branches share key concepts and processes, they have been developed by different researchers, in a variety of settings from laboratories to schools to business organizations. Second, we outline some important issues for further research in some of the branches. Third, we emphasize the value of developing new research methods for testing and applying the theories.
Practical Implications
These theories have been used to explain phenomena of gender, racial, and ethnic inequality among others, and for understanding some cases of personality attributions, deviance and control processes, and application of double standards in hiring.
Social Implications
Status and expectation state processes often operate to produce invidious social inequalities. Understanding these processes can enable social scientists to devise more effective interventions to reduce these inequalities.
Originality/Value of the Chapter
Status and expectation state processes occupy a significant segment of research into group processes. This chapter provides an authoritative overview of ideas in the program, what is known, and what remains to be discovered.
Details
Keywords
Basic science, sometimes called “curiosity-driven research” at the National Science Foundation and other places, starts with a question that somehow stays in the mind, nagging for…
Abstract
Basic science, sometimes called “curiosity-driven research” at the National Science Foundation and other places, starts with a question that somehow stays in the mind, nagging for an answer. Such questions really are “puzzles”; they arise in an intellectual field or context, asking someone to fit pieces to an improving but incomplete picture of the social world. What makes a worthwhile puzzle is a missing part in understanding the picture, or a new piece of knowledge that does not seem to fit among other parts. Sometimes creative theorists can imagine a solution to one of the holes in the puzzle. If they are also empirical scientists, they devise ways to get evidence bearing on their ideas, and some of those ideas survive to give more complete and detailed pictures of the world. This chapter is the story of puzzles and provisional solutions to them, developed by dozens of men and women investigating status processes and status structures, using a coherent perspective, for over half a century.1
The purpose of this paper is to explore critically the potentially harmful business of professional wrestling in the USA as state-corporate crime.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore critically the potentially harmful business of professional wrestling in the USA as state-corporate crime.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper comprises desk-based research of secondary sources. The lack of official data on the harms experienced by professional wrestlers means that much of the data regarding this is derived from quantitative and qualitative accounts from internet sites dedicated to this issue.
Findings
A major finding is that with regard to the work-related harms experienced by professional wrestlers, the business may not be wholly to be blamed, but nor is it entirely blame free. It proposes that one way the work-related harms can be understood is via an examination of the political economic context of neo-liberalism from the 1980s onwards and subsequent state-corporate actions and inactions.
Practical implications
The paper raises questions about the regulation of the professional wrestling industry together with the misclassification of wrestlers’ worker status (also known as wage theft and tax fraud) and the potential role they play in the harms incurred in this industry.
Social implications
The potential wider social implications of the misclassification of workers are raised.
Originality/value
The originality and value of this paper is the examination of work-related harms within the professional wrestling industry through the lens of state-corporate crime.
Details
Keywords
Christopher G. Reddick and Howard A. Frank
Survey findings from Florida reveal that larger, higher risk communities perceive greater budgetary trade-offs, a view that supports in part the U.S. Department of Homeland…
Abstract
Survey findings from Florida reveal that larger, higher risk communities perceive greater budgetary trade-offs, a view that supports in part the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s recently implemented strategy in distributing its grants. Per expectations, city managers with graduate education saw higher levels of readiness and lower threat risk than fire chiefs. Consistent with prior research, cities were reprogramming and using existing funds rather than new levies for homeland security initiatives. This finding was buttressed by results that recently enacted property tax limits and cuts in federal aid were seen as the greatest challenges to increased funding. Contrary to mainstream public administration writing, our respondents stated that restrained funding rather than intergovernmental coordination was the biggest issue they faced in meeting homeland security needs. Overall, our respondents saw a low risk of terror threat, a perception that may represent an accurate read of the operating environment or an implicit belief that higher levels of government will provide significant assistance in the event of a major terrorist attack or other conflagration.
Michael J Lovaglia, Robb Willer and Lisa Troyer
We develop elements of Network Exchange and Expectation States Theories to explain the relationship between power and status. While power and status are highly correlated…
Abstract
We develop elements of Network Exchange and Expectation States Theories to explain the relationship between power and status. While power and status are highly correlated, demonstrating that power can be used to attain high status has proven difficult, perhaps because negative reactions to power use limit power users’ influence. We propose three ways to reduce negative reactions to power use. One of them, philanthropy, suggests a solution to the “free-rider” problem in collective action. If philanthropic contributions increase status, then contributing to a public good may also. Thus, status attainment may be an incentive motivating public goods contributions.
Joseph Berger and M. Hamit Fişek
The Spread of Status Value theory describes how new diffuse status characteristics can arise out of the association of initially non-valued characteristics to existing status…
Abstract
Purpose
The Spread of Status Value theory describes how new diffuse status characteristics can arise out of the association of initially non-valued characteristics to existing status characteristics that are already well-established in a society. Our objective is to extend this theory so that it describes how still other status elements, which have become of interest to researchers such as “status objects” (Thye, 2000) and “valued roles” (Fişek, Berger, & Norman, 1995), can also be socially created.
Design/methodology/approach
Our approach involves reviewing research that is relevant to the Spread of Status Value theory, and in introducing concepts and assumptions that are applicable to status objects and valued roles.
Findings
Our major results are an elaborated theory that describes the construction of status objects and valued roles, a graphic representation of one set of conditions in which this creation process is predicted to occur, and a design for a further empirical test of the Spread of Status Value theory. This extension has social implications. It opens up the possibility of creating social interventions that involve status objects and valued roles to ameliorate dysfunctional social situations.
Originality/value
Our elaborated theory enables us to understand for the first time how different types of status valued elements can, under appropriate conditions, be socially created or socially modified as a result of the operation of what are fundamentally similar processes.